By KEVIN FRYLING
Reporter Staff Writer

The accepted view among professionals in the public health field has long been that if people perceive that the benefits of eating right and exercising outweigh the costs, they will engage in healthy behaviors. But a UB psychologist working in the School of Public Health and Health Professions (SPHHP) says this perspective leaves out one of the most important factors when it comes to how people make decisions: emotions.

Mark Kiviniemi uses psychological research methods like surveys and research volunteers to gather people’s thoughts on healthy behaviors. PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

A former member of the psychology faculty at the University of Nebraska, Marc Kiviniemi says studying health behavior—initially only a vehicle for his work on psychological questions about decision-making—is now the primary focus of his research as an assistant professor in the Department of Health Behavior, SPHHP.

“There’s a bunch of different models of how people make decisions,” says Kiviniemi, who joined the UB faculty last fall, “but they all ultimately share a common set of assumptions—that people are rational decision-makers. If you think about all the reasons you eat a particular food, however, health is really only one small part of it. The broader field of decision-making research has at this point a sense that the models only go so far in terms of explaining behavior.”

Comfort foods are a perfect example, he adds, noting that everyone eats certain foods not because they’re healthy, but because they have positive emotional associations. “And if you look more broadly across different kinds of health-related behaviors,” he says, “there are emotional associations with all kind of different behavioral choices.”

He points out that feelings of euphoria—or “runner’s high”—are common among joggers and that potentially life-saving medicinal procedures, such as colorectal cancer screenings, are avoided by many patients due to feelings of embarrassment or disgust.

In order to get to the root of these various emotional reactions to heath-related behaviors, Kiviniemi employs psychological research methods, including surveys, questionnaires and research volunteers, to plumb people’s thoughts on such activities as eating nutritious foods or exercising. In his lab—which is under construction in Farber Hall, South Campus—he says he plans to continue work begun at the University of Nebraska in which subjects are shown photos of certain objects or actions—fruits and vegetables or people engaging in physical activities, for example—and then asked to rate their emotional state on a sliding scale.

“People aren’t always consciously aware of how they’re feeling or that their feelings are associated with a behavior,” he explains. “When you do indirect measures, you get around some of those problems.”

Kiviniemi says the results of his work on emotional reactions to physical activity were published last year in the journal Health Psychology, and that the results of a large-scale investigation concerning fruit and vegetable consumption are under review. Other ongoing projects include investigations into smoking and alcohol consumption among college students, and in collaboration with Iowa State University, marijuana use among high school students he says.

Funding for these projects includes a $500,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute, on which he serves as principal investigator, and a $1.4 million grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, on which he serves as a co-principal investigator.

“All these things have very strong public health relevance because behavioral practices are very much associated with disease morbidity and mortality,” Kiviniemi says, noting that cigarette smoking, dietary practices and alcohol consumption are the top three indirect causes of death in the United States. “Once we better understand how it is these emotional associations influence behavior, then down the road we can go in and try to design intervention strategies that actually change people’s behavior.”

The recipient of a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, Kiviniemi says the chance to help build the Department of Health Behavior, which was founded in 2006, was one of the things that attracted him to UB. SPHHP, which was created in 2003 through the merger of the School of Health Related Professions and the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, formerly a part of the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, also is fairly new, he says.

“It’s exciting being part of building the School of Public Health and Health Professions and being on the ground floor in terms of developing the Department of Health Behavior,” he says. “There are just not many times that you get the opportunity to be part of creating a program, as opposed to coming into one that already exists. That excitement and the vision for both the school and the department were really a big draw.”

He also points out that UB’s strengths in terms of the health sciences are valuable resources for his work.

“There are all sorts of strengths here for people who are interested in health behavior and health promotion and disease prevention,” says Kiviniemi, who serves as a member of the Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. “There’s a lot of exciting work going on here and people who are interested in collaboration.”

Kiviniemi is teaching a core course this semester on health behavior in the master of public health program. “One of the interesting things about being in a graduate professional program is that you have people who bring a really rich set of life experiences,” he says, noting that his students come from all walks of life—including several international students and people who’ve spent 15 to 20 years practicing medicine. “I have people who are specializing in biostatistics, people whose interest is in health services administration and people who are interested in epidemiology,” he says.

A native of North Carolina, Kiviniemi now lives in the Elmwood Avenue neighborhood of Buffalo with his wife, Jennifer Hunt, an associate professor of psychology at Buffalo State College.

“We love living in the city,” he says. “We’ve just been enjoying exploring different areas and going to a lot of music and cultural events. I think that’s one of Buffalo’s real strengths—all sorts of fun things to do.”